by Laken Cane
She leaned her forehead against the warm, thick window. Eagerness warred with terror as she waited, waited for something unfamiliar and horrifying.
And at that moment, Megan slowly turned her face toward Rune and opened her eyes.
Caught with that stare, Rune trembled, realizing she was digging her fingers into the brick wall only when one of her nails snapped.
She’d never been so afraid.
Every time she thought she’d reached the limits of fear, had experienced the height of horror, something new came up to show her how wrong she’d been.
This was worse.
Worse than anything.
And she didn’t know why.
Suddenly she stiffened. “They’re wearing silver. That’ll kill the baby.” She had her claws to Eugene’s throat before he was aware she’d even moved. “What the fuck?”
She grabbed onto her outrage eagerly, so glad to have something to concentrate on besides the insidious fear that she got a little vicious.
The ops came at her then, as she unintentionally cut through Eugene’s skin.
“No,” he told them, his hands up. “Stay back.” His eyes were calm as he looked at her. “Rune. There’s a reason. Just watch. If I’m right…” Carefully, he wrapped his fingers around one of her wrists, making her think, for one brief second, of Lex.
“Trust me. Rune. Trust me.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” she said, her voice hard.
But then there was a sound, the sound of an infant crying, and she forgot about Eugene as she turned back to the thick plate of glass.
Even before the child was all the way out Rune could see that Megan had breathed her last. But the child…
The baby slid from its host’s body and lay across the bed, its screams changing to growls. The baby grew—it changed from a seven pound infant to a twenty-five pound toddler in seconds.
Another infant burst from the mother.
Identical twin girls, both with black hair, both with startling blue eyes and long, silver claws.
They’d gotten those from Rune.
But their beautiful, identical features, those belonged to Levi and Denim.
“Oh God,” Rune cried. “No!”
At the sound of running footsteps, she turned her horrified gaze to watch as Levi and Denim came toward her, confused. Terrified.
“Why are you here?” she asked them.
Levi shook his head, hard. “We had to come. What is this?”
But as soon as they looked through the glass, they understood.
Spikemoss Mountain.
The Shop had used COS to steal the blood and magic from the twins and Rune to create…
Monsters.
Horrible, horrible monsters.
The twin girls began to cry, opening their jaws wide to show sharp, growing fangs. Elongating their claws, they reached for the four Annex men who stood there in their silver-laced suits.
“Run,” Rune whispered. Then she beat her fists upon the wall of thick glass and screamed it. “Run!”
She knew what the mutated offspring were going to do. So did the twins at her back. Levi clutched at her upper arm, too shocked to give voice to the horror inside him.
“Oh, no,” Denim said. “Don’t hurt the…”
Don’t hurt the babies.
Because even though Rune and the twins were disgusted and horrified and hurt, they recognized their own fucking children.
That. That was what COS had stolen and raped and milked from them. Magic and semen and blood.
Fucking blood.
They were growing the strongest, most invincible monsters the world would ever see.
Rune grabbed Eugene by the throat. “You knew,” she said. “You fucking knew.”
“No, I did not. I did not.”
She flung him away. The baby Others screamed as the men in the room slung silver nets over their little heads and dragged them to the floor.
The first mistake they made was not being careful enough. The second was not really understanding, despite their silver-laced suits and masks, how dangerous the newborn Others would be.
And Rune had to get inside that room. Not only to save the Annex from the children, but to save the children from the Annex.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Eugene,” she said, her voice calm even with the fear and dread beating at her brain. “Open the door.”
Her reluctance to try to break the thick glass or kick in the door had nothing to do with traumatizing Megan that time. She was more worried that the magic inside the room, inside the infants, would weave its way through the building and hurt the people inside.
She couldn’t know what it would do, and she wasn’t willing to risk it. Not when Eugene, even if he didn’t know it yet, was going to let her inside the room.
He narrowed his eyes, his fingers to his throat. “No, Rune. I can’t.”
“Before you argue, consider that your words might be your last if you make the wrong choice. With or without you we will get into that room. Decide.” She didn’t even bother turning when the medical ops inside the room began screaming.
Eugene did, and the blood drained from his face so fast she was sure he’d collapse, but he merely nodded and strode to the door. “We can—”
“Rune,” the berserker yelled.
She glanced down the hall before she slipped into the room, to see Strad and Jack striding toward her. “Dammit,” she said, then yanked Eugene into the room with her and the twins.
Without Eugene, the berserker and Jack couldn’t get inside. She couldn’t take a chance they’d be slaughtered.
Or that they’d slaughter the children.
“Hide,” she told Eugene, and shoved him to one of the doors inside the room.
“Do not kill them,” he ordered, and then he ran.
She glanced once at the window cut into the wall and met the berserker’s despairing gaze. He put his palm on the glass and mouthed her name.
“Rune,” Levi called, yanking her away from her berserker. “Hurry.”
The children had chewed through the silver netting as though it were sugar, and their mouths smoked and bled from the taste.
It hadn’t stopped them.
They were…inhuman.
Denim pulled one man from the clutches of girl number one, but the man was suffering and beyond help. His eyes rolled wildly as blood sprayed from wounds in his thigh.
The child who’d bitten him screamed in hungry rage as Denim dragged the worker away, and she tried to stand and follow them. She failed.
The babies couldn’t walk, not then.
Two of the workers were already dead, but the last one was still alive. Baby number two had grabbed his leg and was busy munching, and Levi…
Levi crouched beside her, his eyes full of pleased wonder as he watched her.
“Levi,” Rune screamed. “Fuck you!”
She jerked the unconscious worker away from the hungry baby and carried him to the room into which Eugene had fled.
When she kicked open the door and ran inside to dump him on the floor, she was almost shocked to find Eugene gone.
Almost.
She left the worker inside, hoping he’d survive, and then ran back to the children. Levi and Denim knelt on a floor slick with blood, and the girls sat across from them, silent. Watching.
“Hey there,” Levi whispered.
And Rune knew right then that the children would either save him or send him forever into the dark abyss toward which he’d been heading.
“Hey there,” one of the children mimicked, her voice soft and sweet.
“Holy shit.” Rune knelt beside Levi, unable not to smile when one of the little girls threw the phrase back at her.
“They’re ours, aren’t they?” Levi didn’t take his gaze off the children.
“Yes,” Rune answered.
“This is what came of our time on the mountain. Everything we went through, these children are the result.”
She nodded.
Denim watched Levi, the hope on his face so bright it hurt her to look at it. “Our children,” he agreed.
Levi smiled. The old Levi. “Then it was all worth it, wasn’t it?”
He made sense of it. He made it okay. He won.
“I have made children,” he murmured. “What’s better than that?”
Rune blinked at sudden tears, gaining the interest of the infants. They tilted their heads, as one, and reached for her.
It took her a second to understand they wanted the blood leaking from her eyes.
“No,” she said.
“No,” they agreed, still reaching.
Shit. She scooted closer and took their hands.
They clutched at her fingers, and she winced at the pain. Had she been human, her bones would have broken.
And then she saw something in their eyes, something that drove the truth home with a sledgehammer.
Or maybe it was a lack of something.
She knew at that instant the children could not survive.
“Can we hold them?” Levi asked. “Hug them?”
Rune closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “For a minute.”
Levi reached eagerly for the child closest to him. “Hey, sweetheart,” he murmured.
“What now?” Denim asked. “Can we raise them?”
Rune said nothing.
Her chest hurt so she pushed her palm to it, trying to shove away the pain. “God,” she cried, finally.
Denim frowned. “Rune? What—”
The berserker’s rage sounded at the exact same moment Levi’s baby attacked. The door flew open, and an Annex army began to stomp into the room.
She caught a glimpse of Strad and Jack fighting the ops, trying to get through them to her, and then, she put her attention back on her children.
Chaos.
Always, chaos.
And blood.
The children had Levi in a death grip. The one he’d been reaching for had her fangs buried in his chest. The other one had latched onto his side, just under his ribs.
They shot out their claws to hold him still as they drank.
“Rune,” Denim screamed, the horror in his voice drowning out the sucking sounds the children were making. “Help.”
She gave herself the tiniest, tiniest second to doubt, and then she shot out her own claws and went toward the children.
Maybe she was doing the right thing. Maybe she was doing the only thing she could do.
Levi slumped to the floor, and Denim sobbed as he dragged his brother away. They both left Rune to deal with the horror.
The monsters.
The children.
They were the only babies she’d ever have.
And she had to kill them.
The ops parted to let Denim struggle through, not offering a hand to help him. They crowded the doorways, weapons aimed and ready.
The babies turned on Rune. They grew steadily, likely from consuming their father’s blood, and morphed into young women as she watched. Hair snaked over their bodies, covering them like tents. Their claws elongated, growing into slicers longer than Rune’s.
Their blue stares held hunger. Nothing more.
They hung their heads low, and growled.
But first, they smiled.
Rune shuddered.
In those smiles was everything she might have been.
Everything she could have been.
And none of it was good. Madness, hunger, death.
Could she destroy beings that had come from her? That were part of her?
“Not children,” she said. “Not really.”
And they grew.
The berserker came through then, with Jack, Denim, and Raze at his back. The room was vast, but when the crew forced their way past the line of Annex soldiers, it became tiny.
Rune took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, and went after the newborns.
Chapter Fifty-Six
She whirled, slashing her claws through the air, hoping she could give the monstrous infants a quick death.
They were untrainable, and they were uncontrollable.
Their newness, their infancy, should have made them relatively easy to take down. There was a learning curve to magic, after all.
The hard part for her was committing the act—but she went after them with the intent to kill, shutting herself off to the emotions trying to cloud her mind.
Her children were unintentional enemies.
“Rune,” Eugene yelled. “We need them.”
So the Annex guards weren’t there to take out the babies. No. Eugene wanted to study them. Wanted to bottle the magic. And maybe he wanted to grow his own monstrous army.
The Annex ops were there to try to prevent Rune from hurting the babies.
Once again the berserker roared his rage, but she had no time to see what was keeping him from her.
She sent her claws through the chest of the monster closest to her, dragging them through the delicate bit of flesh, slicing through its heart, before lifting her left hand to do the same to the other child.
The children screamed.
Their screams weren’t merely the screams of pain, or even rage. They were the screams of the birds, only a hundred times more potent.
Rune realized even as she fell to the floor, her hands over her ears, that they’d plucked that out of Levi’s head when they’d fed.
They’d taken his memories and turned them into abilities.
“Rune,” the berserker yelled.
She looked up then, looked up because she needed help. She needed Strad, and she needed her crew.
She’d thought the hardest part in killing the twins would be her emotional connection to them.
She’d been wrong.
And Strad wasn’t coming to help.
He stabbed at an invisible field with his spear, his face screwed up in a desperate grimace as he tried to break through.
And though sparks flew as he beat savagely at the unseen wall, it didn’t give.
The babies had surrounded themselves—and Rune—with a circle of magic too strong to breech.
Rune was on her own.
The suffocating magic grew stronger, trying to get a grip on her lungs, her brain. Panic began to take hold.
I can’t breathe.
I don’t need to.
Shut it the fuck out.
At least Levi and Denim had gotten out. There was always a bright side.
She lowered her hands and climbed to her feet, forcing herself to function through the dominating bird screams and the suffocating magic. The infants mouths were open, their eyes unchanging as they released the sounds that would have wreaked havoc upon a normal enemy.
The Annex ops clutched their weapons and fled.
Her crew stayed, their loyalty and love stronger than the children’s crippling screams.
Only the berserker was able to remain upright. Even Raze had fallen to his knees, his hands over his ears, trying unsuccessfully to shut out the horror inside those screams.
“Shut up,” Rune screamed, and she thrust her claws through the open mouth of the girl on the left.
A mouth she could barely reach.
The twins’ bodies had lengthened in their latest, strangest growth spurt. They swayed on legs too long and thin to resemble anything remotely normal. Their torsos were short and thick. Large, heavy heads wobbled on necks like mushroom stems, too weak to hold the weight.
They no longer looked human.
She could only hold on to the hope that they would have a weak spot. Every being had a weak spot. Even Damascus. Surely the children would be no different.
She just had to find it.
One of the twins struck before Rune was aware she was going to, her speed faster than even Rune’s.
The child drove her claws into Rune’s chest.
Rune screamed in agony as she clutched at the razor-sharp claws, her own retracting as she tried to dislodge the monst
er from her heart.
But she couldn’t. Her legs gave out and she fell as paralysis hit her. The child’s claws had changed to obsidian.
But then…
The girl fell with her.
In seconds, they both understood exactly what the weakness of the mutated Others was.
Levi’s injuries hadn’t affected the girls.
Rune’s did.
She was their weak spot.
The child yanked her claws from Rune’s chest, crying out in pain.
The twins were Rune’s.
And she’d have to destroy herself to destroy them.
But first…
She sped to the invisible wall the girls had thrown up, glad it was there. It would protect the crew she loved.
“Berserker,” she whispered. “Turn away. Turn away from me.”
“No,” he said. “Rune, no.”
But he knew what she would do. She would protect the world, if she could.
She would destroy the evil. For that was why she existed.
Her father’s words were true.
“Turn away, baby,” she told him.
He shook his head, his face pale, his scar a stark reminder of the violence they lived. “I can’t be without you now.”
How would she feed him if she died?
And Levi and Denim. She’d addicted them only to leave them?
But if she left the twins of magic alive, they would not be stopped by Annex ops. They would kill the world.
Her crew gathered beside Strad. Lex had appeared, her blind eyes dancing crazily, her face wet with tears. Someone had pulled Levi back inside and he lay against the wall, still but watchful.
A movement at the door drew her attention, and for a millisecond she forgot the babies waiting behind her.
Owen stood inside the doorway, his fists clenched.
He was always going to dwell a little on the fringe. Alone.
And his eyes, his eyes…
His eyes were terrible.
“The monsters are creeping up behind you,” Lex said. “But they don’t know what to do.”
“That’s okay, Lex,” Rune said. “I do.”
“Wait,” Raze said, his voice so low and harsh she could barely hear him. “Wait a minute.”
Ellie ran into the room, his hand on his chest. “What,” he cried. “No. Rune?”
He ran into the field with such a force it knocked the breath from him. He staggered back and fell to his knees. “Rune,” he begged, when he could breathe again. “You said you wouldn’t leave me here alone.”